


Time and Tide

by untamableseas



Category: Black Sails, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Magic, Beaches, Character Death, Humanity, Love at First Sight, Magical Realism, Not a Love Story, Ocean, Pirates, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sacrifice, Sea Monsters, Unconventional Relationship, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:35:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untamableseas/pseuds/untamableseas
Summary: Life-giver and life-taker, the sun hardly understands the difference. The sun and the sea have that in common.
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

When the sun bleached the colour from the sails and rendered them stark white, it took their spirit along with it. They hang loosely on the mast, nothing more than ill-fitting garments on wooden limbs. One could say it was cruel when the sun spotted the speck-that-might-be-a-ship in the midst of all the blue and spared a searing glance, but the sun would pay no mind. A force of nature has no use for those trivial and inextricably human concerns like cruelty or kindness. Life-giver and life-taker, the sun hardly understands the difference. The sun and the sea have that in common.  
  
The ship bobs on the surface of the water, drifting aimlessly towards an ever-reaching horizon. It's been like this for days, the sky is the same never-ending blue as the sea. The crew is uneasy. Their course was lost days ago, and an absence of wind means there's little work for them at their regular stations. The deck has been swabbed clean, dark wood gleaming under the punishing sun. It's quiet. Unusually so. Hardly a sound to be heard, save for the miserable lapping of half-hearted waves on the hull and scattered murmurs of discontent from the crew.  
  
Their Captain, old and weathered and more myth than man, carries himself with the proud and aloof air of someone who's known more than a lesser man could ever hope to in all his mortal life. He has heard secrets whispered to him in the crashing of the surf, such a man never misses the hushed voices of his own crew.  
  
They weave tales of bad omens, of vengeful spirits bringing down their fury on an ill-fated ship. "The sea never stays this calm for long. Unnatural, it is" they say, in huddled groups over mugs of crude brown ale reserved only for salted sea dogs such as themselves. "There's a storm coming" the First Mate spits through the gap where a tooth used to be, yellowed eyes darting to the gaunt faces of every poor soul stuck on the cursed vessel. They eat up his words of a rendezvous between their Captain and... _something_ years before. Some say it was God, outraged that the sea dared speak to him in ways no man had ever been spoken to before, others claim it was a mermaid who’d taken pity on him, or the vengeful ghost of a woman who died a widow after the Captain struck her beloved down. Perhaps it was all of them and none at once.


	2. Chapter 2

The rumours have plagued him for years, trailing behind him wherever he goes like a stray dog he’d made the mistake of feeding. The Captain won't condescend to confirm or deny them. If one were to sift through the silt of every story ever told about him, the shining bit of truth at the bottom of the pan would always be the same: he loved the sea and the sea chanced to love him back.  
  
It began when the Captain was a boy, so innocent and young that the world hadn’t yet taught him to stifle the curiosity so brightly burning in his eyes. He was enchanted the first time he wandered down to the beach and felt the sand between his toes and the waves lapping at his ankles. When the sea called to him in that ancient unspoken language and he waded farther in, mesmerized by the beauty and ignorant of the danger, she drew the boy underwater and baptized him in salt. Purifying him before dragging him to her depths like she’d done to so many before. But this time was not like the others.  
  
The boy did not thrash or call out or panic in her grip. Even when his lungs were screaming for air and the shades of blue around him faded to black, she felt no fear from him. He did not surrender to his fate; surrender would imply that he had put up resistance in the first place. The boy was calm, a quiet acceptance flowing from him. Acceptance, and something else that the sea couldn’t quite name. She was a force of nature with a penchant for chaos and destruction, and in all her might she had never been denied anything before. Until this boy came along and refused her the dread she was deserving of. Utterly disarmed and the slightest bit charmed, the sea spat the boy back out, violently, like she’d gotten a strange taste in her mouth.  
When he washed up on the shore, coughing and spluttering but so _alive_ , the boy smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

It took him only three days to find himself back on her shores. The sea was calm that day, and he regarded her with equal parts trepidation and fascination. Long after he had left, she realized that she had been looking at him the same way.

  
The visits with the boy became frequent. For years she watched him splashing in the surf, weaving figures out of seaweed and conquering kingdoms made of sand. Eventually she began to tell him stories, of the sunken treasures that lay in her depths and the creatures fearsome and fey that swam in her waters. Her voice was the churning of the waves and the scuttling of the crabs on the sand, and occasionally the roll of thunder. She never stopped to question if he understood her, somehow she knew he would. On rough days when the sky was grey and the wind fierce, he would look upon her with such reverence that it stirred something in her heart that lay at the bottom of the ocean, a place where even the sun couldn’t reach.

  
At 14, penniless and no longer affording the luxury of dawdling on the beach, the boy found himself crewing a pirate ship. He made his home aboard the Dauntless with a ragtag bunch of thieves and ex-navy men. Among them were wives who’d fled in the night searching for something, anything more than the cages that came along with their gender. In exchange for hard work and courage in a fight, the Captain of the Dauntless guaranteed each of them a place to sleep and a living wage. The boy was glad for that, but mostly, he was glad to be at sea, with miles of blue stretching around him in every direction.

  
The boy became a man on the ship, and the sea continued to speak to him. He learned to read her movements and interpret her subtleties, and with this knowledge he steered the ship away from treacherous waters many times. His Captain was grateful for that, and believed him to possess some supernatural gift of foresight. This was the beginning of the rumours surrounding the man.


	4. Chapter 4

Another chapter was added to the Captain’s story when the Dauntless came across mermaids, and every man but himself had gone to meet them and never came back. In their lust, they thought to ask for a kiss, and in their arrogance, they thought to steal one if it was not given willingly. The sea had told the man about the creatures before, but even her most detailed descriptions had not done the mermaids justice.

They were beguiling and appalling at once. Their faces were attractive but unnatural, overly large, iridescent eyes and cheekbones that were much too sharp. Svelte bodies and aquatic tails adorned with sharp fins, true to the inked likeness on the arms of sailors in every port. The man felt a chill that had little to do with the temperature, as inhuman eyes fixed upon him with knowing. A fanged mouth twisted up in a haughty smirk as a mermaid regarded him, taunting eyes almost saying “So, you’re the one”. The sea spoke to him then, crashing against the hull and urging him to go below deck and not look back. She spared him the sight of his crew members being devoured, but she could not shield him from the sound.

Shrieking from the mermaids like the grating of steel on stone, accompanied by the cries of dying men and the splash of bodies writhing in the water. The mermaids’ sickening indulgence formed a cacophony the man would not soon forget. As he wept for his crew members, he asked the sea how she could let something so terrible as the mermaids make a home in her, how she could love them. The sea answered back that men had done more evil on her waters than any creature ever did, that it was in their nature to kill, but the mermaids only devoured those who sought to do the same to them.She reminded him that she had almost taken his life once, and had taken countless others.

When there was no one left but him to hold the title, the man became the Captain, and he used the sea’s secrets and all of her might to ensure his survival, and his comfort. Each time he hunted down a treasure galleon and knew exactly where it would be, or sailed through a hurricane that no ship should have been able to survive, the legend surrounding him grew. But many years went by, and the sea grew tired of the constraints of their arrangement, and the Captain grew weary in his old age. So the sea told her Captain that someday she would strike him down, and they would be together, truly. The Captain just shook his head and smiled, and the sea thought it was the same smile she saw on that beach a lifetime ago. 


	5. Chapter 5

By now the Captain knows that that fateful day is soon, he’s simply waiting for the storm to come.

When the wind finally returns, it does so with all its might. It sends the rigging shaking and threatens to topple the men from the ratlines. Ropes creak and scrape, calling out a warning in the only way they can. The once slacking sails swell with purpose again, fabric straining against the howling force of the air. The crew rush frantically about on deck, struggling in vain to make adjustments so that the ship might survive the storm. Below them, the ocean churns and crashes against the hull, sending sprays of salt from its depths and into the faces of wide-eyed crewmen. The Captain stands at the helm, staring at the gathering grey clouds before him, rolling steadily towards his ship. A wicked understanding shines in his eyes he witnesses the first fork of lightning come down from the furious sky, and a half-crazed smile splits his craggy face as he grabs hold of the wheel with a newfound spirit.

All around, the wind wails and the ship shudders as the mast strains against the force of it. Some of the crew are on deck, grabbing buckets to bail out water as they cling to last hopes of survival. Others sink into corners, defeated, with dripping hands clutching rosaries from a lifetime ago as mumbled prayers fall from trembling lips, a final plea for deliverance from the briny demise that awaits them. A few of them never get the chance to make their last-ditch deals with God, or the Devil, or whoever might be listening. Instead they’re sent to meet their makers without preamble, plucked from the ship by waves that reach onto the deck like tentacles.

As the Captain looks ahead, his grip on the wheel loosens. He sees the sea part and the waves open up to devour his ship whole, and the last defiant light in his eyes goes out, replaced by a look of serenity. He stumbles from the helm to join his crew, while a newly-formed maelstrom rages around them, pulling them into the maw of the sea. The waves churn and the wind howls, but the Captain feels no fear. He looks upon the sea in her most unapologetic state, harsh and untameable, and he is transported back to that beach so long ago. He chose to love a force of nature instead of fear her and this is the price he must pay, was always willing to pay. When he closes his eyes and succumbs to the deep, it feels like a caress.

There are many things to see as the Captain makes his final journey. Curious creatures peek out of the reefs that they call home, and shining silver fish dart between branches of vibrant coral that’s sharp enough to cut. The Captain drifts past ships, dilapidated and rotting, and the exposed bones of long-dead sailors, their watery graves marked only by sand. He sinks deeper still. The dappled sunlight beneath the waves begins to dissipate, gradually swallowed up by an inky darkness. For an instant the Captain thinks he can make out a familiar face in the shadows, luminous eyes staring coolly back at him. The figure vanishes as quickly as it appeared, and the Captain continues his descent. His body settles against a layer of rock, sending clouds of long-undisturbed silt floating up around him.

The Captain's journey ends on the bed of ocean, where even the sun can’t reach. His body will be buffeted by the currents and worn away until all that remains is sand, but his spirit finds new purpose in the plates at the bottom of the sea. He is free to become the force that shakes the Earth and oceans alike, that causes mountains to erupt and fire to rain down from the sky. Years later, sailors will tell one last story about the Captain, who loved the sea so much he dove down to the bottom of the ocean and became her heartbeat.


End file.
